Is it worth it to resume selling on Amazon Marketplace?

I used to sell on Amazon Marketplace years ago. While Amazon's cut was not small, I was able to sell quite easily by adding lots of description about the condition and setting the price at or near the lowest current offer price.

Now that I'm paring down my physical media collection (almost exclusively CDs), I'm wondering if I should bother listing there again. My account is currently in limbo because I haven't sold there in such a long time. I need to submit an ID and recent credit card statement to reinstate my account, and I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle.

Any comments?

 

Several years ago they purged a bunch of online used CD sellers. Maybe things have eased up since then, but not sure if they have changed that.

Might want to check discogs also?

Anyway good luck - would be interested in hearing about your experience if you try Amazon again.

 

Greg, there's always here on the Forum as well with no fees.

 

Sell a CD for $5.00 and after fees your take-home pay is $0.86 . . . It's not worth the hassle unless you have something worthwhile to sell.

 

Most CD resellers are gone from Amazon, because a couple of years ago they started requiring you to produce wholesale invoices for the product you are trying to sell.

 

Like Dave said earlier, the forum is probably the best way to go. No hidden fees or small print. You would probably sell the item quicker on Amazon or Ebay as more people can see the item, but you take home less money. I don't know about Amazon, but it costs to list and relist items on Ebay so if you want to lower the price, you'd have to pay. Here you just have to post in your thread. I honestly think that your best bet would be this forum's classified ads.

 

Discogs.

(I'm selling on ebay, Amazon and Discogs.)

 

Yes, I sell on Discogs and here as well. Seems like I always got more sales through Amazon back in the day though. Maybe I just need to be more patient.

 

Yeah, this forum’ is low ball city.

 

It depends on what you're selling.

If you are selling tonnage titles, which retail for a few bucks, then Amazon is a terrible choice. With all the fees, you will barely break even.

If you are selling unusual out of print titles that sell for significant money, then Amazon is a reasonable platform, along with the others. Note, however, that Amazon restricts which titles you can sell in the music category, and you can't sell a good fraction of titles unless you have a verified account, which is itself painful/impossible for small sellers.

The best choice used to be Fulfilled By Amazon, where you'd send stuff in and they'd ship it via Prime to buyers. Not any longer. Now the warehousing fees are high (and apply to every unit), the shipping fees are a lot higher, and the listing restrictions make it a bad choice for most small sellers.

 

Anything that looks like it will sell for less than $8 goes into a box and I take it to PREX. Not worth my time on any platform.

Interesting. This morning I went through and verified myself. I had to upload a driver's license scan and a (redacted) banking statement. I was verified in less than an hour and now I have a few items listed. However, I tried listing one box set and wasn't allowed. I have to be verified further, which requires a copy of "1 purchase invoice for products from a manufacturer or distributor." Sure... I'll get right on that.

 

Amazon is good for getting top dollar for (old) still sealed vinyl LPs if you can wait it out long enough - because it is slow going. I only move aprox 24 items per year, but they are hefty prices I get. It's a nice little extra on top of Discogs or eBay selling. I need to load some more items into Amazon inventory, thanks for the reminder.

 

Are you able to list CDs for sale?

 

Yes, but not certain ones. For example, I tried to list the recent Lou Reed - New York LP/DVD/CD box set and got the notice that I needed further verification first. I guess it's based on artist name.

 

Let us know how it goes from here.

 

The restricted titles--of which there is a huge number--don't follow any rhyme or reason. A lot of the major label stuff in print is restricted. But a lot of stuff that's out of print is restricted, as is a lot of obscure stuff on random labels.

Also beware that if a customer wants to make a return, Amazon will force you to accept it no matter what. eBay/PayPal are bad for the seller when up against a buyer pulling a fast one, but Amazon is even worse.

 

I got thrown out with the dishwater a few years back; kept some inventory going. In the middle of this pandemic, a package was late and seller did a a-z claim and Amazon couldn't consider the possibility of bending the rules for guarantee shipping during this extraordinary times so i was thrown under the bus and with that I shuddered the store for good. At the beginning it was a good run.

 

I really resent the way Amazon cornered the market on offering re-sellers a place to move their stuff...and now they've got the critical mass, all their used prices start exactly low enough so that, with shipping, it makes just as much sense for a customer to buy a new product directly from them. That's the way of it nowadays: give people a place to do something as a lure, then take their market share out from under them. Capitalism at its' most predatory.

 

Used to sell on Amazon

i just ended up hating it and will never go back

I been much happier with discogs

 

Amazon doesn't sell any used merchandise (other than the occasional customer return through Warehouse Deals).

Do you mean the new prices are low enough that it makes no sense to sell used copies of in-print low value items (e.g. mass market CDs)? That's true.

But Amazon prices merely reflect the prices the labels set. The $6 catalog CDs that you get from Sony are because Sony sets the retail price low. And, yeah, it's hard to make much if you have to charge less than $6 shipped.

 

No. I mean, for many years the Marketplace sellers were able to offer their lowest prices, which beat Amazon's prices on new albums. Now, apparently Amazon has no sellers offering anything that can beat Amazon's prices, once you factor in shipping.What a convenient coincidence...which it is not.

I certainly do not think it's the "marketplace"s doing, nor do I think it's the seller's doing. It's Amazon, putting their thumb on the scales of the system, which was originally designed by them to give dealers of used merchandise someplace convenient to offer their wares, but to also give customers less reason to leave their umbrella.

Once that market was cornered, they started turning the screws.

Again, capitalism at its' most predatory, and you can't make a case that's not their business model. They learned it watching Sam Walton.

 

Amazon has gotten product ideas from sellers, found out who the distributor is, bought a ton of the merch, and hammered the original seller with a lower price, if not outright pushing them off the site completely. So true, I know a seller who got their brand and marketing stolen right out from under them.

 

Ah, you're talking from the buyer's standpoint.

Well, that's due to two thing.

1) Gohastings went out of business. They were holding down the price of used merchandise.
2) Shortly after Gohastings bit the dust, and not coincidentally, Amazon bowed to pressure from the record companies to thin the herd of used sellers on Amazon. They instituted limits on who could sell for many listings, and if you can't show an accepted supplier, you can't sell at all. By doing that, most of the remaining low priced sellers evaporated.

 

Damn right. All I am is a buyer, and since neither you or I are talking about actual artists, I'm really only interested in the buyer's, or consumers, point of view.

A lot of the music for my online radio station (five years of promoting artists to adult listeners looking to the net for music discovery)(this is what radio does, by the way: producing paying customers to the labels, thereby their artists)...was thanks to being able to afford Hastings prices (since my station was not part of the establishment, I wasn't on any freebie-mailing lists from the labels). Yeah, I loved Hastings. And, all the other used CD outlets across the country; I shopped whenever I was someplace else and had a want list to populate a very eclectic/niche playlist, through used music...all in the service of exposing my listeners to unfamiliar sounds. So yes, Hastings and Amazon Marketplace were my two first choices.

So, when you say "the labels leaned on Amazon", you're saying they threatened to limit Amazon's access to their new product, yes? And sooooo...how is this different from Amazon leaning on their own Marketplace sellers to keep their prices where they could prevent them from competing within the Amazon retail space? Third time's a charm: capitalism at its' most predatory.

So, sorry I'm taking the buyer's point of view. I can't empathize with Amazon's situation, the record labels' situation (since used music was actually helping them sell their own their own product, in my case), or, the radio industry's position either (since it was their maneuvering which put my station, and thousands of other online microcasters out of business by forcing us to pay a royalty structure they themselves didn't, when they put their own broadcast streams online.

When you can manipulate the structure of competition so you don't have any...that is (SING it with me, now): capitalism at its' most predatory.

Thank you, and goodnight.

 

Thus providing ebay a stronger market on used music media, until eBay jacked-up fees and got too strict in other ways, thus driving out sellers who were not too desperate to tell them to F-off like me. Then like a saviour coming down from the heavens, Discogs gained and rolled out the welcome mat, and sellers with decent stock and were good at customer service had a place to go. Exactly what I was praying for a decade or so ago. Everyone had doubts that anything could come along to rival ebay, and Amazon's powerful hold on the market. Yet both venues dropped the ball thinking that long term they were better off without those small-time sellers. I'm just hoping Discogs is not sold off to Universal or Sony and the rules get changed almost overnight.